


More Than the Sum of Your Organs

by cassowarykisses



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Biology, Canon-Typical Cannibalism, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 11:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17161037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassowarykisses/pseuds/cassowarykisses
Summary: Humans are truly inefficient at healing,Venom says.On Klyntar we would just melt our bodies down and discard the damaged cells if we were poisoned. But you insist on specialized organs.“Hey, I didn’t design them,” Eddie says, and eats another Bagel Bite.*Eddie and Venom get the flu.





	More Than the Sum of Your Organs

**Author's Note:**

> This is a secret Santa gift for tumblr user nerdofnerds. Merry Christmas, Codi!
> 
>  **"This,"** is how Venom's dialogue appears when he speaks out loud. His internal dialogue to Eddie is formatted **like this** , without quotes.

It all starts with a normal patrol. They scare off a couple would-be muggers, swing by Mrs. Chen’s to hear her report on what groups exactly are trying to hone in on protection money from her and her friends, and scale a building to break into this one guy’s office, a place they’ve been scoping him out for weeks. They’ve kept an eye on him both in costume at night and on the Brock Report, talking to people who hang around the docks. It’s blindingly obvious to both Venom, who can smell blood long after someone’s hands have been scrubbed clean, and Eddie, who can wheedle information out of anyone eventually, that the guy they’re after is some kind of up-and-coming enforcer in organized crime, which has Venom excited.

 **“Bully,”** he whispers to Eddie as they sort through piles of invoices pulled from the filing cabinets Venom was kind enough to break the locks off of. “ **I’ve met bullies before. Don’t like them.”** Flashes of memories - of scientists, of Riot forming into living armor over Drake, of gleaming symbiotes Eddie’s never seen before forming alien limbs into weapons - all play out in Eddie’s mind. Venom finishes it off with their own sense-memory from a patrol last week, a room heavy with the smell of bleach overlaying a darker copper tang. That was only a few blocks from here, in a building owned by tonight’s mark.

“Yeah, fuck this guy,” Eddie whispers back, one eye on the door and one on their phone. They snap photos of as many papers as they can. They’re probably incriminating to an accountant, but math has never been Eddie’s strong suit and Venom is still learning about the concept of money and taxes. Apparently, there’s no capitalism in space. Or at least, not when the symbiotes are through with a planet.

Venom is looped snakelike against Eddie’s neck, watching him dig through the drawers of the cabinets and move onto to the desk drawers. He stiffens suddenly and flicks a tendril towards the door, though his eyes stay trained on the papers in Eddie’s hand. “ **Eddie. Footsteps.”**

“Mask?” Eddie says.

 **Copy,** Venom says inside his head, already slipping inside and around him.

Their mark is alone when he opens the door, not that it actually matters. His fate was sealed the moment they came here, bodyguards or no bodyguards. He looks dead on his feet already, coughing into a handkerchief with deep bags under his eyes. He shuffles in and turns on the light.

When he turns back, he sees them seated and grinning in his chair. He opens his mouth like he’s going to scream, but he chokes on his own adrenaline. He stumbles backwards, tripping and banging his head against the wall, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. Eddie passes over control of their limbs, and Venom doesn’t hesitate. He pushes their body over the desk in a smooth predator’s leap.

The mark hits the ground with a thud, and Venom bites his face off and licks out his brain in one smooth motion. They straddle the corpse and rest for a brief moment, then Venom sinks his claws into the man’s chest and pulls open the ribcage. When he’s finished with the organs, Eddie takes back control and pushes them up to grab his phone off the desk. He passes it to Venom, who nestles it safely within his mass.

 **Easy prey,** Venom says. He’s practically purring. **We should do this more often. These men are always so delightfully weak. It is a shame their lungs never taste very good.**

“That’s why I don’t smoke,” Eddie says. He opens the office door and heads for the fire escape. “At the rate you’re eating them, we might need to start rationing these guys out. We don’t want to run out of bad guys in San Francisco. I can only go on so many road trips.”

 **That won’t happen,** Venom asserts. **Your world is luxurious, Eddie. It will always provide for us.** **_You_ ** **will always provide for us.**

“I’m flattered,” Eddie says, a smile tugging at his lips. Venom senses it and stretches the grin of their face further, teeth and tongue tasting the cool night air.

 **Ready?** he asks.

“You bet.”

Venom launches them off the rail of the fire escape. It’s a straight shot back to their apartment, but it’s late, and like Eddie’s mother always said, nothing good happens after midnight. Who knows what criminals they’ll run into on the way there.

*

It’s a quiet night, as it turns out. The sight of them jumping from building to building was enough to startle an attempted car thief into running off. Nothing worth pursuing.

The next day is equally uneventful. Eddie wakes up, eats a tray of Bagel Bite frozen pizzas, figures out the best way to turn the photos they took in as an anonymous tip, and references his memories against the police report of the death of the guy he ate last night, so the article he’s writing doesn’t sound quite so suspiciously well-informed. Venom continues his quest to eat every cockroach that makes its way into their apartment and watches the first two episodes of _I Was Bitten_ on Animal Planet.

 **Humans are truly inefficient at healing** , he says. **On Klyntar we would just melt our bodies down and discard the damaged cells if we were poisoned. But you insist on specialized organs.**

“Hey, I didn’t design them,” Eddie says, and eats another Bagel Bite.

*

The next day, Eddie wakes up feeling like he was run over by a truck. “Venom?” he groans. Venom needs less sleep and sleeps at different intervals than he does, so he’s usually awake when Eddie gets up and catches naps throughout the day as Eddie works.

There’s no response at first, then Eddie hears a sluggish **Ugh.**

“Are we okay?”

**Something’s getting inside your cells. I don’t like it, Eddie. It hurts.**

“What does that even mean?” Eddie groans. He tries to sit up, but his arms feel bruised, like he’s exercised past his limit. The last time he felt this bad was … right after he first got Venom, actually. “Are _you_ okay?”

**Yes. I think.**

“You _think_?”

**It’s your cells that are the problem, not mine. I think it’s a virus. Feels like one, anyway. The last planet we conquered made a pretty nasty one to try and drive us off before we could take them as hosts. It didn’t work.**

“You gave me a space virus? Are we going to have to call the CDC? Will there be a zombie outbreak?”

He can feel Venom flipping through his memories to find the definitions of ‘CDC’ and ‘zombie’. Normally, it doesn’t feel like anything when Venom goes through his brain; it’s just disorienting, like his train of thought is jumping around, but now it makes him feel nauseous. **No. I haven’t seen this one before. It must be an Earth virus. It feels like Earth when I poke at it.**

“I thought you would take care of those,” Eddie says. It would be kind of pathetic for the Lethal Protector of San Francisco to be laid low by a cold. But then again, being kind of pathetic together is the foundation they’ve built their relationship on. He squints against the light from his alarm clock. It reads 5:48, but the light is so bright in the darkness of his bedroom it’s almost painful. His mind feels heavy and slow, and Venom’s voice sounds too loud inside his head.

**It happened very quickly. I am doing my best. Your immune system has many parts and I do not want any of them to break.**

“Yeah, that’s … that’s probably good.” Eddie tries to roll over onto his side, but his whole body protests. He feels too hot and too cold simultaneously. It reminds him of how he felt when he tracked down Anne and Dan and ate a lobster in front of them, another thing from the bad days when he and Venom first met. He shuts his eyes.

 **“Eddie.”** He feels the strange shift in his center of mass and the extension of his senses that means Venom has emerged from his body. Venom drapes his snakelike form against Eddie’s head and makes an odd burbling rumble. **“You are very hot.”**

Eddie wants to giggle, but then Venom sends him a sensation over their bond. A cool, smooth surface against something warm and damp with sweat. “Is that .. me?” he says. “What you feel?”

 **“Yes, Eddie.”** Venom pulls away from him and stretches across the room. A moment later, something drops on the bed with a thump.

Eddie opens his eyes and sees Venom’s face hovering in front of him. **“I have brought you your cell phone,”** Venom says. **“Tell your boss you will not go hunting for information for him today. Then we will call Anne and Dan. They will know what to do for your human diseases.”**

Eddie grabs the phone. “I know what to do,” he says as he fumbles through his contacts list. “More or less.”

 **“I want a second opinion,”** Venom says. **“Anne and Dan are surprisingly good at keeping your body intact for people who have never seen inside of it.”**

Eddie sighs.

*

One voicemail to Jack later, he messages Anne and Dan. The three of them have a group chat now, and he’s been thinking about getting Venom his own phone so he stops stealing Eddie’s to ask them questions like, **“How come only executioners get to kill bad guys? And how do I become an executioner?”** and **“Why is Eddie’s hearing so shitty? He can’t hear any infrasound at all.”**

_I have a cold_

_just need to lie down for a day or so but V wants to hear that from one of you because he’s an asshole who thinks I need him or one of you guys to look after me_

_FaceTime us when you get a chance_

He lets his arm flop back down on the bed. It aches, and he wants aspirin, but not badly enough to walk to the bathroom and get any. Venom oozes out of him and spreads over him like a blanket. His body temperature is cooler than Eddie’s, and it feels really nice against his skin. He’s actually pretty feverish, he realizes. Venom squeezes him gently, like a full-body hug.

After a while, his phone vibrates. Anne. _It’s just a normal cold?_

He texts her, _V says it’s an Earth virus. maybe the flu. my whole body hurts._

Her next message reads: _We’ll come to you_

Do none of them have faith in him? He texts back:

_you don’t need to_

_but you can_

Dan texts back a stethoscope emoji and a smiley face.

*

Eddie has no idea how long it takes for Anne and Dan to get to his apartment. The sensation of Venom wrapped around him is soothing, and at some point Venom started … humming? purring? Whatever it is, it’s both alien and comforting.

When they hear a knock, Venom forms over him like a wetsuit, leaving his head exposed, and walks their body to the door. His muscles still hurt all over, but it’s not as bad as when Eddie tries to move. He guesses Venom is doing something in his brain to deaden the pain, like he does when they get shot out on patrol.

“Hi Anne,” he says. “Hi Dan.” His voice sounds marginally better than he feels, at least.

“Is that Venom?” Anne asks, making a gesture indicating his whole body.

“Yeah,” he says, at the same time Venom emerges from his shoulder to rumble, **“Yes.”**

Anne thrusts something at them. It’s a half-finished tin of cocoa. “I know you, and you’re just going to want to eat toast for the rest of the week. If you don’t eat something besides that, Venom will digest your organs, and none of us want that.”

Dan adds, “I don’t think you should be trying to eat any criminals while your buddy there is literally holding you up.”

 **Chocolate! Phenylethylamine!** Venom says inside Eddie’s head. He’s clearly delighted. **Eddie, she remembered!**

“Venom says thanks,” he says. “He’s saying the whole chemical again. I can never pronounce it.”

 **“It’s really not that hard,”** Venom says to him. Then, to Anne: **“Phenylethylamine. We are very grateful.”**

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Now make Eddie sit down before he passes out.”

Venom drags Eddie over to the couch, while he apologizes for making Anne and Dan come over.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dan says. “Now Venom. How do you know it’s a virus?”

Venom shrugs with Eddie’s shoulders, but replies with his own voice. **“I looked at Eddie’s cells. I’ve had hosts die from viruses before, but this one is new to me. The viruses taste like Earth when I eat them.”**

“You can see the viruses?” Dan asks. His eyes are gleaming. “Is it only in your host’s cells, or can you do it to anyone?”

Eddie lets his head fall back against the couch pillow. Venom coils his tendrils up so his head rests next to Eddie’s. The contact is comforting, even though Venom is technically all around him and inside him already.

“Focus, honey,” Anne says, and pats Dan’s arm.

Dan grins sheepishly. “That’s talk for when you’re well,” he says. “For now, though: have you been around anyone who was sick?”

“Only every day on the bus,” Eddie says. He wants to lie down.

 **Eddie,** Venom says. **There was the man.**

“What man?” he says. Dan points to his head and raises his eyebrows in a question, and Eddie nods. “Just say it out loud, V, you’re already outside me.”

 **“We ate a man the night before last,”** Venom says to the room. **“His lungs tasted bad. He was coughing, too.”**

“Jesus Christ,” Anne says.

“Viruses can be transmitted via bodily fluids!” Dan says. “If he had traces of the flu or cold viruses in his lungs, that could’ve gotten you sick.”

 **“That is pretty much what I figured,”** Venom agrees.

Eddie raises his head. “So that’s it?” Of all the ways to get revenge from beyond the grave, inflicting seasonal illness on your killer was probably among the least cinematic.

Dan shrugs. “Probably? The guy you ate lived here in San Francisco, so it’s almost certainly just a cold or flu. If you’re fatigued, it’s most likely the flu; if you’re coughing and sniffling, it’s a cold. I could prescribe you Tamiflu without a problem if you think it’ll help.”

**“I want to eat the viruses.”**

“Eating the viruses would help out the Tamiflu, I think, but I’d like to have it as a backup,” Dan says. “It depends on what you mean by eat? I presume you’re not using your, uh, the mouth you’re using to talk right now?”

 **“Of course not,”** Venom says, curling back in offense. **“I am not so limited.”**

“I just want to not be sick,” Eddie moans.

“Well, your buddy seems to want that too, fortunately enough,” says Anne, and gently pulls Dan away from the start of what was probably going to be an engaging-but-confusing conversation with Venom.

*

Being sick sucks.

They make the couch their semi-permanent home. Every day Eddie gets to call Jack and feel a little more nervous about ruining his second chance at a career in journalism, while Venom prods more at his cells to root out the flu virus. That seems to make Eddie even more achy and feverish, which Venom assures him is “ **Absolutely expected. I have read so in multiple articles online.”**

So you know. Getting better is a work in progress.

Venom isn’t directly affected, since the virus can’t make the jump to his alien cells, but Eddie can tell his illness is taking a toll on him too. It makes sense - he lives inside Eddie, and he’s working to help Eddie’s body fight off the sickness. He’s been manifesting less and less outside of Eddie, saying he needs to make sure Eddie’s organs are ‘clean’, which is a little worrying to hear even if Eddie doesn’t feel bad enough to think there’s cause for real alarm. Venom’ll still come out when Eddie asks him to, though, which is the only silver lining on this particular cloud of sickness, because Venom’s tendrils are a lot more convenient for getting food and water than Eddie’s shaky limbs. He’ll grab a loaf of bread for Eddie, so that he can eat plain untoasted white bread for the third day in a row, and Anne’s can of cocoa for himself.

Eddie swallows his Tamiflu and watches Venom dab a tendril into the cocoa powder, then lick it off. He’s watched Venom eat enough to know that he can absorb food through his skin as well as eat with his mouth, though he’s never quite sure why Venom chooses one method over another.

 **This is neater,** Venom responds to the curiosity in his thought. **No powder gets on you.**

“It looks like the saddest meal on the planet.” Like Eddie’s one to talk. Right now his mouth tastes like dehydration and Wonder Bread.

**A symbiote is supposed to live off the organs of its host until it can discard them for a stronger body. The empire back in space would see everything I eat as a pathetic substitute.**

“Well, screw them,” Eddie says, because being sick hasn’t made him feel particularly charitable. He reaches out and pats Venom’s tendril as a show of support. That’s about as much as he wants to move today.

Venom extends another tendril and pats him back. **Rest, Eddie.**

He’s more than willing to do that.

*

And rest is all he does for two more days. Aside from when he got Venom, Eddie hasn’t felt this out of it since sophomore year of college, when he got the flu the week before finals.

On the sixth day, Venom wakes him up.

 **Eddie?** he says. **I feel sick.**

The blanket that Eddie pulled over himself last night is sweaty, and he feels like his fever has risen overnight, though maybe not as high as it was the first day. “What’s wrong?” he says. Venom sounds upset but not panicked, so Eddie reserves his fear for later. Maybe he should be more worried, but he’s so _tired_ and this is the last thing he needs.

 **Too hot,** Venom says. There’s a wriggle of distress somewhere in Eddie’s abdomen that makes him dry heave.

“Are we getting sicker?” Eddie asks, hand over his mouth. “Should we call Dan?” He’s already pawing around through a pile of tissues on the side table with his other hand, feeling for his phone.

 **The fever is good for you,** Venom insists. **It should break soon. But I am too hot. I used up a lot of me clearing your viruses out.**

“You’re - you’re okay, right?” Eddie says, thoughts of aching muscles falling by the wayside. If the rocket couldn’t kill him, then surely this couldn’t hurt him -

**Not dying! I feel sick. Like you. But it was too hot under the blankets.**

Oh. Thank god. It feels strange that it’s a relief when the brief burst of adrenaline wears off and he notices the pain in his body again. “You know didn’t have to make yourself sick for me, V.” Eddie says. “Humans fight off flu all the time.”

**But sometimes they don’t.**

“Yeah, and I had faith that you would survive that rocket crash, and you did. Have a little faith in my immune system. It got me through thirty-six years without you.” Eddie says. “If you need to cool down, come on.” He staggers to his feet and stumbles to the bathroom. It still hurts to move, but it’s a short walk. The tile is cool and already Venom perks up at the sensation against Eddie’s skin. Their skin.

Eddie pulls off his sweatpants and boxers - Venom’s been acting as his shirt lately, when he’s not inside Eddie - and climbs into the tub. The cold water that hits his skin reminds him of the Bay, and Venom curls out of him to savor the chill just like he did back then.

Normally, Venom is smooth and dry like suede or slick like a deep-sea creature, but he looks rougher in texture today. Eddie brings his hand up to touch him, and he feels almost sticky, like slightly used chewing gum. He’s also not making eyes or teeth, just oozing out of Eddie’s abdomen as the mass of black pseudopods Eddie remembers from the hospital. It doesn’t seem like he’s sending as much of his mass outside as normal, either, not though Eddie isn’t sure how much of him remains hidden, keeping their bond active in Eddie’s brain and finishing the work of beating back the viruses inside him.

“You okay, V?” he mumbles.

Venom shudders against his hand. **Good. Feels good.** There’s a moment of silence where he wriggles against Eddie’s skin. **Reminds me of something,** he says eventually.

Eddie switches the water off and lies back in the tub. “Oh?” he says.

 **Yes,** Venom says. Eddie feels a gentle tug on his mind across their bond, inviting him into Venom’s thoughts. Venom spends much more of his time going through Eddie’s memories than Eddie does going through his. Eddie just doesn’t have the instinctual ease at sorting through alien senses that Venom does, so half of any given memory is nonsense to him.

This one, though, has been edited for him. The colors have been shifted to human-perceptible ones, and the story is mostly a series of impressions of touch and emotion - he’s very young, and has not yet left Klyntar. Deep in his creche is a crevice that only he goes to. It’s safe and dark and cold for when he wants to play at being hosted, an explorer out in space, and the water is full of nutrients for him to absorb as he rests. They feel good against his surface, alkaloids and amines popping tastily in his mind.

The memory is brief in its edited form, but Venom lets it run through their mind over and over again. It’s strangely soothing in its alienness. It reminds Eddie almost of an imagined landscape from a meditation tape, and he takes a deep breath.

Venom slithers up Eddie’s body until he’s resting on his chest, just over his heart. **You’re better,** he says. He sounds half-asleep.

“Better than what?” Eddie says. The water is dulling his aches and pains, and he feels less like he’s one blanket away from overheating.

 **Klyntar,** Venom says. **All of it. This is better, even when it’s garbage. You’re better.**

*

Eddie decides to just lie there in the bath for the time being. The cold water still feels really, really good. He’s tired, after all, and he can still feel Venom’s memory at the edge of his consciousness. That’s something he wants to savor. If he cranes his neck, he can see Venom curled up on his chest. He’s lost the tacky texture he had earlier, and feels sleek and smooth when Eddie brings up a hand to pet him. Venom makes a little clicking chirp and extends a couple tendrils to wrap around Eddie’s hand. Venom sends **_exhausted_ ** across their bond and Eddie sends back _agreement_ and _relaxed_ . Venom curls his tendrils tighter around Eddie’s hand and lets **_affection_ ** float lazily across their bond. Eddie aches all over and he’s both hungry and tired, but this is still the best they’ve felt all week. He closes his eyes and drifts.

 **Eddie.** Venom prods him in the sternum with a tendril. **You are too cold.**

“Hhhghhh,” Eddie says, waking up.

 **This bath was to help us** , Venom says. **_I_ ** **do feel better. But you will hurt yourself if you stay here like this.** With that, he takes control of Eddie’s limbs and swings them out of the tub. They’re both tired and Venom’s control is inexact, and they slip on the tile. Eddie’s elbow bangs against the side of the shower door.

“What the hell, V,” he yelps, startled back to alertness. Damn. His limbs do feel heavy and unresponsive.

He feels Venom make the emotional equivalent of an eye roll. **I’m going to fix it,** he grouses. **Hold on.**

There’s a sensation in Eddie’s limbs like all of his extremities have fallen asleep and then woken up at once. It feels like his entire body has been turned to radio static, and then it’s over as quickly as it came. He stands up shakily. His knees still feel like they want to give out, but Venom is helpfully bracing them. “My elbow still hurts, you asshole,” he says, but there’s no bite to it.

**Don’t be a whiner.**

Venom shifts inside him, and Eddie realizes that he’s starving. He’d eaten as much as he could stomach over the past few days, even if that was mostly bread and boxed chicken broth, but apparently Venom’s work on him in the hours before he woke Eddie up has taken more out of them than he’d thought. They’ll have to go out and buy food soon, because Eddie really doesn’t feel up to hunting, and he suspects Venom doesn’t either.

“Typical parasite,” he says, “Trying to kill me with hypothermia and then nearly knocking me out. You only love me for my organs.”

**But I do love you.**

“Yeah,” Eddie says as he makes his way to the kitchen, “Love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> (stethoscope emojis are due to be released in 2019 don’t @ me)


End file.
